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“... bore faint traces of the grand manner of the 17th century’, and that the acolyte is evidently St John. All this is a part of the history, the mentalité, of Octave – and so of Yourcenar. These are all fragments peeled from a few dowdy decades in the centuries rolling past Yourcenar’s inward eye. They are so far from everyday conceptions of reality that ...”

“... has to be tested not simply against the views of Assange’s lawyers and helpmates, but those of John Bellinger, for example, a former legal counsel for the State Department, who told AP television news in 2010 that bringing charges against Assange while he was still in the UK would put a loyal ally on the spot by generating a rival extradition ...”

“... she could close America’s political divide’) to the Democratic nomination and then defeating John McCain in the presidential election – he felt he had proved something both about himself and his country. ‘My having been elected president was proof that the American idea endures.’ It’s a big claim. No one else, by implication, could make ...”

“... As John Berryman​ tells it, in a Paris Review interview conducted in 1970, he was walking to a bar in Minneapolis one evening in the mid-1950s with his second wife, Anne, the two of them joking back and forth, when Berryman volunteered that he ‘hated the name Mabel more than any other female name’. Anne decided Henry was the name she found ‘unbearable ...”

“... on the Democrats for congressional support. Elite leadership of the Republican Party collapsed. John McCain chose the shockingly unqualified Sarah Palin as a running mate in the 2008 election because she was hugely popular with the Republican base, who revelled in the outrage she triggered among liberals. Barack Obama’s victory in that election only ...”

“... briefing, a darling of the paparazzi, as comfortable in a Tehran nightclub as he was at a Washington summit and likely to be photographed attending both. But is showmanship really enough? In a recent essay in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik described the three sides of Abraham Lincoln’s political personality: Barnum Lincoln, who knew how to put on a ...”

“... are veterans of the Bay of Pigs. Jorge Mas Canosa, whose Cuban-American Foundation has lobbied in Washington for Contra aid, is one such veteran; Carlos Perez, who has set up a foundation to help Colonel Oliver North with his legal expenses, is another. We have the hapless Eugene Hasenfus to thank for confirming the participation of Cuban-American CIA men in ...”

“... rejected a knighthood in 1951). He next set his sights on the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, courted by its director, John Walker, with plans for a new building and murmurs of favourable tax rates. In 1949 and 1950, Gulbenkian sent a selection of his paintings to ...”

“... and lovable hero of ‘Blind Josef Pronek and Dead Souls’. Pronek, a Bosnian writer, arrives in Washington on a writers’ exchange programme with only a few words of English, and when war breaks out at home finds himself forced to stay. (Sounds familiar?) He takes on a few jobs, finds a part-time girlfriend and lives in an apartment where he and his ...”

“... States has a right to dictate what happens in Cuba can be traced as far back as the presidency of John Quincy Adams, when conventional wisdom held that Spain’s dominion over Cuba would inevitably give way to the island’s incorporation into the United States. ‘It’s in the neighbourhood’s interest that Cuba be free,’ Bush said when he introduced the ...”

“... four turbo-prop engined Super Constellation in the skies over his scheme for the completion of Washington in the grandest classical manner. He discusses typology: we know what a church looks like, so we don’t need to invent it every time we build one. We are perfectly capable of developing new typologies, as and when required: railway stations, for ...”

“... Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), the biggest Shia party in his governing coalition. But then Washington changed its mind, saying in private that it wanted Iraq to appear as politically stable as possible during an election year in the US. The Kurds and the ISCI, meanwhile, came to believe that they could get much of what they wanted with Maliki in ...”

“... prepared,’ a sign on the Pennsylvania state highway flashes as my husband and I head out from Washington DC to Los Angeles. OK, but prepared for what? It’s the first of many signs that call us to attention on this September road trip through Bush Country. The last time we drove cross-country was in 1966, in our VW Bug, along with the baby and the ...”

“... by Desmond Rice and Arthur Gavshon, and Messrs Secker and Warburg to interview Rear Admiral Sir John Woodward and Commander Christopher Wreford-Brown DSO, Royal Navy, about the sinking of the General Belgrano; and if he will make a statement. Mr Stanley: As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said to the hon. Gentleman on 21 February 1984, the ...”

“... weapons, a technology the Russians were already pursuing. The first tests convinced both Washington and Moscow that hydrogen bombs were far too powerful for traditional military purposes; purposes were found for them, nonetheless. Eisenhower discovered that nuclear weapons could cut costs: they were cheaper than conventional military ...”